Sonic Restaurants announced on January 20, 2017, that they were going to insist that their providers of chicken meat sell them only chickens that had not been raised with antibiotics for growth promotion that were also used in human medicine.

And they would now be insisting that all antibiotics used for treatment, control and prevention of infectious disease in chickens would be only under the direction of a DVM and come with a prescription.

News Flash: this is FDA’s Policy Guidance 209 and 213 and the Veterinary Feed Directive that went into effect January 1, except that the new FDA rules apply to beef and pork also. Sonic Corp. said they were also considering adding cows and pigs, which is good, since it’s the law.

My point here is that foodservice end users are getting a lot of PR mileage with marketing claims that in reality just mean they are following the law. And, with or without their statements, suppliers would be providing them with this type of product anyway, because it’s the law.

I was in Palm Desert last week, finalizing some plans with Steve Sayer for our book, which we hope will be published in four to six months. Played a little golf, ate some really excellent meals, and soaked up some warmth and Sun. Nice change of scenery. And his nice uncle got us on a really nice golf course.

Now that I’m rested, I am committing to doing a better job of not engaging in discussions that go negative and off topic under my blog. I admit that I let some comments get under my skin a couple weeks ago and probably contributed to some of the exchange going south. No more.

Speaking of food safety, how about the wedding caterer that poisoned two out of three guests? I doubt that outfit will get much more business in their town.

And how about Sonny Perdue for Secretary of the USDA? Good old Georgia boy should know his stuff, including peanuts, and hopefully will bring Mike Doyle along with him as his undersecretary for food safety. There is a chair that needs filled ASAP.

I am probably going to be under anesthesia when this blog posts, getting a knee scoped for a torn meniscus, so my responses may be either not forthcoming, slower than normal or under a narcotic fog. I can tolerate some pain, but when it affects my back swing it is time to do something about it.

One more and I am out of here. Does anyone besides me think that you can reduce your risk of a foodborne illness from eating airplane food by chasing it down with a stiff drink? Or should I just avoid the food and enjoy the drink?

OK, OK. I admit it. I did not mention that Ohio State University report that said they have found plasmids on a pig farm that created a Carbapenem Resistant bacteria, but if I had not said Plasmids in the title would you have read the whole blog? Be honest, now. Would you have? Look forward to being back in action in a couple of weeks.

Pot pourri and plasmids too

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